The Flood

by David Sachs

  Brenda turned the cabinet of electronics on with a switch. Her headphones crackled. She felt electrified: she’d done it. She’d made a connection. No one but her, of the thousands aboard, could have done this.

  The voice of the satellite was there:

  THIS SERVICE IS DOWN. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.

  THIS SERVICE IS DOWN. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.

  Brenda’s knees buckled and she fell to the floor, sliding the headphones off.

  She was an engineer and she saw the world as problems to be solved. Now, she knew the problems were bigger than any solutions, and their rescue had never been in their hands. She sobbed, and her body quivered on the ground in front of the great wall of wires she had devoted her efforts to.

  When she finally arose, she looked at that wall as she gained control of her breathing. She grabbed her chair by the backrest and swung it smashing at the electronics until the lights in the wall were dead, screaming all the while.

  55

  “Golding killed Warrant,” Travis said.

  Hesse did not speak. His eyes opened wide, then his face hardened.

  They couldn’t go to Hesse’s office. Everyone was yelling at Hesse, if they had closed a door, someone would have knocked it down.

  Travis and the others from the lounge had arrived in the quiet Atrium. The amount of time it took for Travis to reach John Hesse was the same amount of time it took for news of Warrant’s death to spread around the room.

  That trust in Hesse and Colonel Warrant, that combination each had of charisma and projected competence, had kept all these desperate, starving people from challenging them in any way. Now Warrant was dead. The trust in Hesse was shattered.

  As the news spread, the shouting started.

  “Hesse!”

  “Hesse!”

  “We’re lost! Where are you taking us?”

  “I’ll kill him,” Hesse said.

  “No way,” Travis said. “I have the gun, Hesse.”

  “Hesse!

  “We’re watching them kill us!”

  “Where are you going to find him? He’ll have sentries, you won’t be able to get near him.”

  “Hesse!”

  “What are we doing?”

  Hesse snarled at the crowd

  “Can you all be quiet? For God’s sake, I need a minute to think, then I can tell you what we should do, and you all can tell me to go to Hell or we can fight back. But I need this minute.”

  He turned back to Travis.

  “He knows about the gun now. We need to flush him out. We’ll cut his power. He’ll be out, and you’ll hear him in the dark. He won’t even be able to see you.”

  “If he’s in the dressing room, he’ll go out the back, he’s got sentries right there, he’ll think its safe. I’ll wait there, around the corner. You get to Brenda and tell her what to do.”

  Hesse turned away from Travis. Travis slipped through the crowd, which had tightened around them. Hesse climbed on to his speech-bar.

  “We’re going to have to fight,” Hesse said. “We only have a few days food left, and we can’t just let him kill us as he pleases.”

  He didn’t want to tell them about Travis and the gun, but they needed to begin preparing in case Travis failed.

  The crowd was shouting back at him.

  “He didn’t kill one of us, he killed one of you.”

  “We have to fight!” Hesse said. “We have no food. And what if he finds our communications work? We could be in touch with the world in a few days.”

  “Why don’t we just wait then?”

  The crowd overtook Hesse, arguing over fighting now or waiting for satellite communications. Hesse let it play for a minute. When the level and frequency of shots slacked, he spoke.

  “We can’t wait for someone to save us. Every day we wait, we get weaker. Every day, he will be working to improve his own defenses.”

  “What do we do, Hesse?”

  “We need to get ready to fight. Golding has spies. We caught one. But because he has spies, we can’t just openly talk about our plans.”

  “THIS ONE IS! THIS ONE IS A SPY! THIS ONE IS A SPY FOR THEM!”

  “What?”

  Heads turned to look. The Atrium was considerably sparser of bodies than when Hesse had first climbed the bar weeks ago, so that he could easily see the speaker, and the man he was pointing at. He knew both men. Both had families.

  The man being pointed out squirmed and looked around.

  “I followed him! I saw him go to the Theater, talk to the sentries, then Golding. I followed him a second time and the sentries let him right in!”

  The man ran, but was summarily grabbed in a number of hands and arms.

  “Please! I just needed food for my family! My son is sick!”

  He was enveloped in blows. More tried to join than could get into the space around the man.

  “NO!” Hesse yelled.

  He ran into the human shell around the man.

  “Please no! NOOOO! Albert! Albert!” a woman cried.

  “DADDY! DADDY!”

  Travis came in after Hesse.

  “Stop! For God’s sake STOP!”

  With each man, their peeling him off the scrum seemed to break the spell and their resistance dropped.

  Albert was dead.

  Hesse was stunned for a moment. He then grabbed two of the men who stood over the body still.

  “Get his body out of here!”

  Travis staggered. At once he understood what had happened: they had killed a father for sacrificing the group for his family. Something that they all would do themselves, to one degree or another. But you couldn’t make that play and fail. The violence of the group awaited.

  “There’s nobody out there!”

  On one of the open staircases electrical engineer Brenda White shouted at the group.

  “Sorry everybody! Didn’t mean to get your hopes up! No one home! No answering machine!”

  The Atrium wail. It had become part of life.

  Brenda stumbled like a drunk down the stairs. Her husband and girls came to her and hugged her.

  Brenda White straightened up and found her way to John Hesse with her family trailing and grabbing at her.

  “It’s time to use my powers for evil,” Brenda said.

  “We’ve got a job for you,” Hesse said.

  56

  Travis Cooke kneeled by his son.

  “I gotta go, buddy, but I’ll be back soon. You just remember Daddy loves you.”

  He was going to kill a man, or be killed. There were still hours before sun-up, and he was going to kill him this night, just as they’d intended with Colonel Warrant. Brenda White had been sent to her work, to disable the power in the Theater.

  He remembered playing basketball with the Mighty Lee Golding, the thrill of teamwork with that larger-than-life man. If things had been different, they would probably have been friends. Only the situation revealed what Golding really was. He wondered about what friendship could mean: in a different place, a different story, you’d be trying to kill each other.

  Travis stood and looked at Corrina. She met his eyes for the first time since the rape. She was sad for him.

  With one look back he captured his son’s face in his mind and went away holding it there. Gerry and Claude Bettman walked by his shoulders, up a dark set of stairs.

  “What were you doing with the gun, Gerry?” Claude asked. “If Travis found it, and Warrant was going to use it, why were you carrying it?”

  “It’s a phallic extension, Professor,” Gerry said. “It makes me feel confident.”

  “Huh. You’re funny, Gerry,” Claude said. “You’re a terrible shot. That man is 350 pounds, standing broadside and you couldn’t get him.”

  “Yeah,” Gerry said.

  “You a killer?”

  “I always thought of myself as a man of peace,” Gerry said. “I’m not rash, I’m pretty patient and calm. Even keeled.”

  “But you lose your temper som
etimes.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t see our friend here as a man of violence,” Professor Claude said. “In fact, I think he’s very poorly cast for this role.”

  “I’m not looking for any critic’s awards,” Travis said.

  “You know what kind of movie this is? A tragedy. And on this Ship of a Thousand Wrongs, you’re making the mistake of this whole cruise,” the Professor said. “Golding doesn’t want to fight. You’re bringing the Reaper closer for everyone, not farther away. You have a son back there, and you’re walking alone into a machine gun and three hundred haters. What is the matter with you? Look we’ve had a lot of yucks these last few weeks, but you’re going to orphan your kid.”

  “Shut up, Claude,” Travis said.

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me? Having a gun doesn’t make you the hero, partner. This is not the movie you think it is. This is the one where a boy’s mom gets raped, then his dad gets killed.”

  Travis grabbed Claude by the shoulders of his jacket and rammed him into the wall. The jacket tore, the two of them tumbled down the stairs, to a landing.

  Claude and Travis disentangled from each other and stood quickly.

  “I’m the one trying to protect Darren, not you,” Claude said. “Go ahead and kill yourself.”

  Claude started down the stairs and Travis started up.

  “The unbearable lightness of Darkness,” Gerry said, walking a step below Travis.

  “I’d rather go alone from here,” Travis said.

  “I’m going with you, Travis,” Gerry said. “I can’t let you go in there alone.”

  “We’ve got one gun. An extra set of hands isn’t going to help. I need to be small, get in, and get out.”

  “You’re not going alone,” Gerry said.

  “No. Gerry, if I don’t make it back, Darren will need you.”

  Step. Step. Step. The breath of the men was their only communication.

  “I’ll take care of your son,” Gerry said. “And I’ll take care of Corrina.”

  “I trust you,” Travis said. “You’re a good man.”

  “The other day Claude and I went to check the lifeboats,” Gerry said. “One of them needed some repairs, but we can start it now, and the davit isn’t too bent. And there’s another one, the boat won’t start but it seems seaworthy and I think we can get the davit to work. We’d just drift. But we’ll be off this boat. I wanted to talk with you about it before, but I didn’t know how we’d get any food. Now, I think anything’s better than staying on this boat.”

  Travis nodded in the dark.

  “Get off this ship,” Travis said. “Tell Darren how much I love him, and tell him I said to be brave no matter what, and if he wants to make me happy, to live. When he’s old enough, tell him how sorry I was for what I did.”

  “I’ll never remember all this, Travis, you’d better just survive, thank you,” Gerry said.

  “Forget it,” Travis said. “If you get off this ship, get off this ship. Be a whole and complete dad. You don’t need a ghost over you and neither does he. Just forget everything I said, and take care of him.”

  Travis walked off, and Gerry’s breathing slipped away.

  “Save a bullet,” Gerry said at last.

  Travis knew the halls well, which would be black and which merely twilight. He picked his way aft, then up to the Penthouse Deck, one of the top two enclosed levels still open for the whole length. He crossed over the closed-off compartment, and again disappeared down a dark stairwell. It was a long walk made very slowly, carefully rounding each corner, stooping to peer down each stairwell, listening at each closed door. He would wait at the lower Theater exits. The top exits were barred. At the lower level there was one open exit to a side hall, as well as the backstage exit to the small lower lobby. He had to be able to monitor both exits.

  He gripped the pistol tightly. He knew he was getting close, knew where the sentries were supposed to be. He also knew everything might have changed since Lee Golding’s killing Warrant. So Travis took his time. He had arranged for a long lead-time with Brenda. Brenda would be in danger too. The power could only be cut directly below the Theater. If Travis heard shots down below, he’d have to improvise.

  He heard his own breathing, slow and controlled, the hush of his step rolling on the carpet, his shoulder brushing a corner. He sometimes imagined he could hear his heart beating as well. It was almost pounding in his chest, but he kept his breathing slow and controlled, listening for all other noises. This last hall was lit along the floor, but not well enough to see more than 20 feet ahead.

  He expected sentries soon so he gently opened a door, let himself into an empty room, and waited in the dark for the lights to go out.

  Twenty minutes later, he heard screaming. Panic. He put his face to the crack in the door. Brenda had done it. The hallway was completely dark now, the low-glow emergency track lighting shut off. He waited for any dangers to pass. The shouting went on, a reaction to the sudden loss of light in the Theater.

  He came out and made his way forward into the heart of the dark and the dangerous.

  He made his way quietly but quickly. Where he expected sentries there were still none. Then he heard two men talking:

  “One of us should go in and find out what to do.”

  “Just let him finish and see what he says.”

  Travis realized how close he was to the Theater. He could hear Lee Golding’s voice, loud enough to echo through the dressing rooms into the hall where Travis crouched.

  “This is not an accident! They’re flushing us out! If we go, we’re dead. We’re safe in here, we have the lower doors locked from the inside, and sentries outside to get me if they have to. We are in lockdown, and we stay in lockdown. If they want to come to us, it’ll be the last mistake they make.”

  They don’t know you don’t have the only gun, Travis thought. But you do. That’s why you want to stay in there. So now I have to come after you.

  “FIRE!” came a shout from one of the sentries nearest Travis.

  Travis saw them moving towards another corridor; he saw them because there was a glow coming from out there somewhere.

  Somewhere below, Travis thought, Brenda must have touched together some wires that shouldn’t have touched.

  “FIRE, STAY IN THE THEATER!” a sentry yelled.

  Will do, Travis thought.

  As he slid behind the two sentries, he saw the fire, spreading from an open stairwell, a good twenty feet from the door backstage. He could make out the door now and found the handle. The door shook, locked from the other side.

  “Who is it?” a voice said nervously.

  Travis did his best Rick:

  “It’s Dumas you idiot, hurry,” Travis said.

  The door opened a crack. Travis saw eyes. Eyes saw him. Travis fired the gun, and the sentry fell inside. Travis grabbed the door and let himself in. There was renewed screaming from the Theater in reaction to the gunfire. Travis was out of the glow of the fire now, again in the dark, moving himself forward in the hallway quickly.

  Now he was a killer. He didn’t let himself think of the man he stepped over, but he felt the label written on himself permanently.

  “Everyone stay put,” Lee Golding was shouting. He was close, in the backstage hall.

  He could hear Lee Golding’s footsteps, then he heard the sentries calling from out in the main hallways.

  “We got the fire door closed! The fire is contained!”

  Lee Golding repeated the shout back to the Theater: “The fire is contained. Everyone stay put. We have someone in here. We have someone in here who doesn’t belong.”

  There were tense minutes. Travis had made his way towards the Theater itself. He expected Lee Golding’s attack each moment.

  In the dark, he felt, heard, and smelt the presence of three hundred humans and knew he’d entered the open space of the Theater. Travis moved in the dark space, keeping the gun protected in his belly as he touched bodies on each side.
One of these would be Lee Golding. He was so close.

  Say something again, Travis thought. Show yourself. Open that big mouth and listen to yourself sound so heroic. I’ll shoot a hole right through you.

  He felt the size of the man he bumped into, heard the quiet exclamation and lifted his gun. Before he could fire his arms were gripped. The gun was pointed away.

  Lee Golding squeezed him tight. Golding couldn’t let go, Travis thought. If he took a hand off to go for his own gun now, Travis’s pistol would be quicker.

  “You’ll die here,” Travis said.

  “Maybe,” Lee Golding said, “but you’ll die here today.”

  “LEEEEE!” came a woman’s voice.

  “LEEEEE! LEE HELP!”

  The voice was hysterical.

  Travis’s head snapped back as his nose burst open, and pain shot through his brain. Lee had head-butted him. He rolled away into the protecting darkness, his world illuminated once more by red star bursts in his eyes, coloring the searing pain. Lee Golding’s loud footsteps went away from him. Travis struggled to his feet.

  “What’s going on?”

  “WHAT’S HAPPENING?”

  “Stay put!” Lee Golding shouted from somewhere, “Stay put everyone!”

  Travis was off after the voice. Stumbling, bouncing off others, Travis made the dressing room hall.

  “LEE! HURRY!”

  “I’m coming!”

  Me too.

  Around a corner, and they were backstage. There was light. A line of fire; a fiery tongue in the mouth of the backstage hall. Somehow the fire had beaten its containment by the sentries. There was a line of fire along one wall right out the door at the other end, and in the light there was Lee Golding’s wife, halfway to the door.

  “Hurry, Lee!” she cried.

  “What is this? How did this happen?” Lee said.

  “Just come on!”

  The two rushed down the hall together. Travis raised the gun and fired at them. They kept moving, Lee fired back and Travis flattened against the wall. I’m being shot at, he thought, with a sudden feeling of how far his life had changed.